By: Precious Mills
BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 22nd October 2021)- A security feature of storing one’s identity data, personal information, and verifiable documents in one’s own ShareRing Vault on one’s own personal device and not on the company’s system is a major selling point for the ShareRing company that is focused on giving customer’s complete control and privacy using block chain technology while conducting business at institutions.
This media house recently conducted a face to face virtual interview session with Head of Business Development & Innovation ShareRing (Caribbean & the Americas) Daryl Thomas who shared that the company has been in existence since 2018 and has created a self-sovereign ID for users around the region and around the world.
To this end a number of one on one consultations with businesses have been taking place and benefits such as Know Your Customer (KYC) process, contactless digital identity, security, convenience, increased efficiency and regulatory compliance system mechanism, quick set-up are included in the talking points.
As gathered, the company has already actually spoken to the St.Kitts-Nevis government as well as different institutions here, and the approach in general to different businesses and institutions have been an “educational” one.
At the time of the interview in September 2021, the company had been running a pilot project in Barbados with the intention of waiting for such to be completed before a systematic approach throughout the region. Institutions are welcome to reach out to the company also.
According to Thomas, ShareRing operates in a number of markets including the entire Caribbean, China, Hong Kong, Australia and the UK.
“So what we do is our ecosystem is pretty big, and we’ve been speaking to quite a bit of management around the region about the different aspects of where we can enter to [incorporate] what they are doing and not being intrusive. So when it comes to technology you’re changing a lot of things very fast so our technology is actually not that intrusive so we actually operate like a top layer so we sit on top of what you already do as a business whether it’s a bank, health centre, hospital, government, credit union no matter what it is- and so we integrate with what you already have and digitize those processes,” he further highlighted.
When asked about the security aspect, the ShareRing official pointed to the vault type privacy when customers uploaded information such as their ID, contact information and certain documents like utility bills for proof of address purposes.
“I really want to speak about security and remove some of that concern. So our platform is what you call self-sovereign meaning that you own your data; you decide when it’s shared, how it’s shared and with who it’s shared. A typical situation is when you go to the KYC [Know Your Customer] process, you go about creating a unique shareRing ID [and] that is your unique ID on your device so you own that device …We don’t save anything; we only keep your name and your email address to match the finger printing that’s been done on the block chain so once you’ve created that ID, you upload say your St.Kitts-Nevis passport; I’m a from Dominica so my Dominican passport…
As understood after the KYC process, “Once, you’ve done that, we would match and basically be able to use facial recognition to make sure what is being used is actually you on that document and the live face that is there is you. So you go through that process and your data, like I mentioned, it’s on your device; you own it.”